Cadillac backs Herta despite difficult F2 start as team principal reframes expectations

Cadillac Formula 1 team principal Graeme Lowdon has defended Colton Herta’s difficult start to his Formula 2 campaign, insisting the American is “ticking off the objectives” despite sitting 12th in the standings after the opening three rounds of the 2025 season.

Herta, a multiple IndyCar race winner and one-lap specialist with 15 pole positions on road courses, made a surprise switch to F2 this year as part of a development programme with Cadillac aimed at preparing him for a potential F1 graduation. The team’s CEO Dan Towriss has set a top-10 championship finish as the primary target, but Herta has yet to crack the top five in a race and has qualified no higher than 14th across rounds in Melbourne, Miami, Montreal and Monaco.

Lowdon, speaking ahead of Monaco qualifying, was keen to contextualise those results. “When he decided to go into F2, he had no illusions that it would be difficult,” he said. “He wasn’t going in there with an unrealistic expectation that he’d blow everyone away. He went into F2 with a specific objective in mind, which was acclimatisation — learn how these tyres work, learn how the race weekends work, learn locations, learn the tracks.”

The Pirelli rubber used across F1 and its feeder series represents one of the steepest learning curves for drivers arriving from American single-seater racing, where tyre management demands differ significantly. Herta’s qualifying pace — historically his strongest suit in IndyCar — has been the most striking area of underperformance so far.

Lowdon acknowledged the optics while pushing back on a purely results-based reading of the campaign. “From the outside you can look at it and say, ‘Well, that looked like a tough qualifier and that was a tough race’,” he said. “I look at it really very differently. For sure, he’s always going to want to be more competitive — that’s just in the DNA of a race driver. But there’s a lot that’s being ticked off the wishlist along the way as well.”

Herta’s move to Hitech GP in F2 was framed from the outset as a long-term investment rather than a bid for immediate results, with Cadillac set to enter Formula 1 as a constructor in 2026. Whether Herta can translate his development progress into the kind of championship standing that would justify a race seat remains the central question as the season continues.